Waiting in the Wings
by Kristi
Summary: During a breather at regionals 2010, Kurt wonders, what is this thing called teen pregnancy? Kurt, Quinn friendship/gen. PG


Author: Kristi  
>Genre: Short, one shot, s1, genfic, friendship, pregnant, high school, regionals, episode-related, light<br>Characters: Kurt, Quinn (friendship)  
>Rated: PG<br>Warnings: N/a  
>Timeline: An inbetweenie to 1.22 "Journey"<br>Summary: During a breather at regionals, Kurt wonders, what is this thing called teen pregnancy?

"Waiting In the Wings"

It was a long ride to Nationals, and then they had to rehearse. Most of the afternoon was eaten up by Rachel and her solo. The boys had wandered off to find hoagies, and the girls were changing into costume in the New Directions-designated green room. For reasons Kurt found baffling, they had voted to eject him from the room and so - alone again (naturally) - he found his own little corner back stage.

Kurt found a seat on a plaster of Paris tree stump, staring at his reflection in a tinfoil and cardboard magic mirror. Three flats leaned against the skeletal framing of a castle tower. A yellow yarn braid was stapled high above their heads and waved the dust bunnies in the breeze coming from some open door back behind the folds of blackout curtains. Rachel was on stage, shouting at the lighting guys in the fish tank at the back of the auditorium.

Light footfalls shook him from his reverie.

"Squeeze a cheek?"

Kurt scooched. Quinn lowed her athletically pregnant self onto the prop beside him, bracing her poorly ballasted weight on his shoulder. He steadied her wrist, feeling gentlemanly and grownup, thinking of the times his dad helped women with heavy suitcases or something. Miss High Kicks was his dance partner for five measures in the second Journey song in the medley; in rehearsals, he'd noticed her getting more and more handsy, needy. Her body was changing under his hands, not that he was trying to notice that kind of thing. He usually passed her off to Finn if she got whiny.

"Why didn't you to go with the boys?" Quinn said.

Kurt waved a hand. "The hunters slaughter the buffalo in packs."

Quinn nodded as if that clicked in her pretty blonde head. "I couldn't stay in the green room another minute. The girls are like . . . a box of marshmallow peeps, if peeps could freak out about their hair. Remember how happy we were when Tina started speaking up?"

Kurt sniffed. "I find female repartee refreshing."

Quinn arched her back and knuckled the muscles to either side of her spine. Her belly jutted out so Kurt could see the bump of her belly button. Was it like a turkey? Did it pop out when the thing inside was cooked?

Quinn rubbed her eyes carefully to not disturb her show makeup. "Well, today, they're giving me a headache on top of my nerves and whatever the hell is going on with my stomach. God, it's like I have PMS or something."

Kurt watched Quinn in the fairy tale mirror, so it didn't look like he was staring. When Kurt was little, and they only had one television, his dad watched _Star Trek_,so Kurt had had no choice but to become familiar with the classical theory of alternate realities. In another life, another Kurt Hummel might be sitting beside a pregnant girl and she'd be _his_ pregnant girl - a wife, a girlfriend, anything can happen when you fall down the trousers of time. He thought about that silly _Trek _ep a lot the past few months and how Puck didn't build a car or write a song, he created a human.

Quinn and her belly, and her pregnancy hair, made him jittery the way thinking about college or politics did; she and Puck and sort of Finn were someone's Mom and Dad and Dad. When they got going at each other in the choir room, he felt like he and Mercedes - hip to hip in their seats like good students - were the two kids in the back seat of the family car.

Quinn's blonde hair curtained her face as she rubbed her temples.

"Are you - do you feel okay? Do you want some water?" Kurt held out the bottle. "It has strawberry flavored protein powder."

Quinn demurred. "I couldn't . . . well. That sounds really good, thanks. My stomach's been bothering me all day."

Kurt didn't complain when she downed the rest of his Power Organics Fraise Light. You just couldn't bitch at a pregnant girl.

"Can you believe this?" Quinn lifted her shirt before he could answer.

Kurt could only focus on the bizarre construction of the maternity jeans, shocked at the bad taste someone in Kohl's Maternity had when they thought the best way to make fat moms look good was attach half a knit sweater onto the band so they could pull their pants up to their armpits. But then she was pulling the band down and exposing her whole stomach. It was ribbed with red stretch marks, and he understood - her skin had been stretched like pantyhose until it rent. Ew. Her naval was, indeed, bumped out. He stared in fascination. He'd never seen a real, bare pregnant belly before - he even covered his eyes when Ms. Snodgrass played them _The Story of You_ in health class. Quinn's rounded belly that jutted out from her otherwise slender body was monstrous, beautiful, utterly bizarre that it surrounded a tiny human being.

And then Kurt realized what Quinn was showing off. An impression popped against her pale skin - clearly a hand.

"Oh my _guh_-" he whispered.

"Don't you want to see how she feels?"

Kurt met her twinkling eyes, shocked, and by her twitching lips knew she'd been watching his reaction from the moment she lifted her shirt. Quinn Fabray had the ability to shock and she liked it. She took his hand and did this count as getting to first base with another hot blonde glee club cheerleader? Whatever. Puck's baby girl punched his fingers.

"She's strong," Kurt said. Until that moment, the growing bulge ruining the line of Quinn's outfits was an "it" or Puck's disaster or Finn's problem. "Does she do this all the time?"

"Less, compared to month six," Quinn said. "She's getting too big for her pouch. Soon she'll . . ."

Kurt looked at her eyes. Quinn was looking away, into their doubled selves in the magic mirror. He didn't know what to say.

"Do you think you'll ever have one?" Quinn said. "Like, adopt, or do the Berry thing?"

Bubbly, breathy laughter escaped Kurt's lips. God, what a thought. "I didn't even like myself until I was old enough to read chapter books."

Quinn covered his hand with hers. Her hands were still callused from her cheerleading days, despite what the hormones or vitamins or whatever had done to her complexion.

"You might," she said. "Lots of guys end up liking babies."

Kurt retracted his hand. He was surprised by his regret when she lowered her shirt. As abruptly as Quinn became a mother before his eyes, she was just Quinn in a baby doll top again. He realized that there was slim, slim chance he'd ever see this infant in its released-upon-the-world state; for better or worse, Kurt didn't see teenage parenthood happening to any of the three people who could lay claim to this theoretical baby.

"Quinn," he started, totally winging it, "whatever you decide, I hope you know that Finn is the most honorable guy you could meet. I mean, he'll totally be there for you. And for her."

Quinn's smile was like the marigolds on the last day of summer - a fading sunny expression under her sad brown eyes. Her fingers brushed his face as she kissed him on the outside corner of his smile. She stood and looked down at him from the distance of the long view.

"Thank you for not judging us for the past nine months. You've been a true friend." Quinn had a way of saying things as if she was channeling a '70s, _Godspell_-esque Mary Magdalene. Kurt forgave her that miscast.

As she walked away, he realized she'd been barefoot and barelegged in her soft, cotton skirt. Hand on the blackout curtain, she gave him a little smile, and was swallowed up in the darkness.

Two hours later, Quinn gasped at the first clench of labor.

* * *

><p>an: I said no more fanfic, I said I wasn't going to start writing another fandom, I said I was going to write that novel I've been picking at for almost a year. And yet. I've been watching reruns and Kurt's surprisingly mature attitude toward the whole pregnancy thing interested me.

a/n2: I think Glee said some interesting things about boys and pregnancy, and the balance between responsibility and fear and the limits of best intentions.


End file.
